Microsoft ODBC Driver 13.1 for SQL Server released with Always Encrypted support

Microsoft yesterday announced the full release of the Microsoft ODBC Driver 13.1 which data access to Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Azure SQL Database for C/C++ based applications. New features included in this driver update are listed below,

Always Encrypted

You can now use Always Encrypted with the Microsoft ODBC Driver 13.1 for SQL Server. Always Encrypted is a new SQL Server 2016 and Azure SQL Database security feature that prevents sensitive data from being seen in plaintext in a SQL instance.

Azure Active Directory (AAD)

Use AAD authentication to centrally manage identities of database users and as an alternative to SQL Server authentication. The ODBC Driver 13.1 allows you to specify your AAD credentials in the ODBC connection string to connect to Azure SQL DB.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)

IDNs allow your web server to use Unicode characters for server name, enabling support for more languages. Using the new Microsoft ODBC Driver 13.1 for SQL Server, you can convert a Unicode serverName to ASCII compatible encoding (Punycode) when required during a connection.

AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AG)

The driver now supports transparent connections to AlwaysOn Availability Groups. The driver quickly discovers the current AlwaysOn topology of your server infrastructure and connects to the current active server transparently.